Package delivery via the UAVs is a promising transport mode to provide efficient and green logistic services, especially in urban areas or complicated topography. However, the energy storage limit of the UAV makes it difficult to perform long-distance delivery tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal logistics framework, in which the UAVs can call on ground vehicles to provide hitch services to save their own energy and extend their delivery distance. This multimodal logistics framework is formulated as a two-stage model to jointly consider the incentive mechanism design for ground vehicles and path planning for UAVs. In Stage I, to deal with the motivations for ground vehicles to assist UAV delivery, a dynamic pricing scheme is proposed to best balance the vehicle response time and payments to ground vehicles. It shows that a higher price should be decided if the vehicle response time is long to encourage more vehicles to offer a ride. In Stage II, the task allocation and path planning of the UAVs over traffic network is studied based on the vehicle response time obtained in Stage I. To address pathfinding with restrictions and the performance degradation of the pathfinding algorithm due to the rising number of conflicts in multi-agent pathfinding, we propose the suboptimal conflict avoidance-based path search (CABPS) algorithm, which has polynomial time complexity. Finally, we validate our results via simulations. It is shown that our approach is able to increase the success rate of UAV package delivery. Moreover, we estimate the delivery time of the UAV in a pessimistic case, it is still twice as fast as the delivery time of the ground vehicle only.
翻译:通过无人驾驶飞行器提供包件是提供高效和绿色后勤服务的有希望的运输模式,特别是在城市地区或复杂的地形,然而,无人驾驶飞行器的能源储存限制使得难以执行长途交货任务。在本文件中,我们提出一个新的多式联运物流框架,无人驾驶飞行器可以要求地面车辆提供搭车服务,以节省自己的能源并扩大运送距离。这一多式联运物流框架是一个两阶段模式,以共同考虑地面车辆的激励机制设计和无人驾驶飞行器的路径规划。在第一阶段,为了处理地面车辆协助无人驾驶飞行器交付的动机,提出了动态定价计划,以最好地平衡车辆反应时间和地面车辆付款之间的平衡。在本文件中,我们提议,如果车辆反应时间长于鼓励更多车辆搭乘车辆,则可决定更高的价格。在第二阶段,根据在第一阶段获得的车辆反应时间,对无人驾驶飞行器的任务分配和路径规划进行了研究。在第一阶段,仍然有限制地发现地面车辆路路路路的路径分析,由于多路路路段分析的冲突次数不断增加,因此,我们提议通过快速运输方式分析,快速运输车辆的进度分析是双倍的进度分析。最后,我们提议,我们通过快速运输的进度分析是快速运输的进度分析,这是我们通过地面运输的进度推算。